Sad to see that no one else has mentioned the Inheritance Cycle (besides for my own opening post). It was pretty popular back in my high school at the time...

As for Harry Potter, I've read the first 4 books, but haven't read further (watched all the movies, though).

I read the first three books of Harry Potter and then realised it was never going to deviate away from horrible pop fiction.

To be fair, three books is good going. It only took one of those Twilight books and one of the Hunger Games novels to come to the same conclusions.

For folks that are interested in reading a real book, go get Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa

I have read the first one and truthfully wasn't that impressed with it. I mean it was ok but it wasn't no Harry Potter thats for sure.

I read Shogun by James Clavell a few years ago, and I liked that brand of historical fiction - especially dealing with the power struggles among the elite in that period of Japanese history. I also have Romance of the Three Kingdoms on my shelf, but it's in the original Chinese (and thus incomprehensible to anyone born in the last five centuries)

_{I'll assume that not many people on this forum are interested in historical fiction, so I'll shut up now haha}

All I know about Romance of the Three Kings is that it's a "dry read". It's mostly just historical accounts of who fought who, who died where, etc. I'm not that interested.

And now all of a sudden I want to read Usagi Yojimbo for some reason...

I actually had Shogun at one point (I got it for ¢99 at a local thrift store), but it was way to big for me at the time, & now I'm unable to find it

TBH, I'd love to see more books (non-fiction or fiction) set in a classical Japanese setting. There was some book I read in high school that was (fantasy story), but I can't remember the name, which is a shame, because I enjoyed it.

I read Shogun by James Clavell a few years ago, and I liked that brand of historical fiction - especially dealing with the power struggles among the elite in that period of Japanese history. I also have Romance of the Three Kingdoms on my shelf, but it's in the original Chinese (and thus incomprehensible to anyone born in the last five centuries)

I'll assume that not many people on this forum are interested in historical fiction, so I'll shut up now haha

Taiko's probably the best Japanese Historical Fiction I've read, but that might be because Toyotomi is an interesting persona.

Yoshikawa also wrote Musashi, as in the story of Miyamoto Musashi, and it's another good read. Shogun's not a bad book though.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a dense text, but worth tracking down a good translation (there are a lot of bad ones) if you've got an interest in Ancient China. It's a similar commitment to, say, War and Peace, but it's worth the effort.

TBH, I'd love to see more books (non-fiction or fiction) set in a classical Japanese setting. There was some book I read in high school that was (fantasy story), but I can't remember the name, which is a shame, because I enjoyed it.

There are loads, but you're better off learning Japanese. It's hard to find a decent translation of some of them.

Percy Jackson series (Rick Riordan)

Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking (Susan Cain)

Do you know any books similar to Rashomon? In case you haven't seen it, it's an old Japanese film in which four people give eyewitness accounts to a murder, but all the accounts are different. I really like the formula, and it has been parodied countless times, but I don't know any books of the sort.

/me high-fives Happy_Mask

Shogun is a loooong novel. I have it broken into 2 hard back novels. Also, have never read it.

Another book I have that I've not read is this. My friend and my uncle both tell me that if you can get past the strange names of the Aztecs, that it's a great and fascinating read!

I read Shogun a few years ago, and while I really liked the characters, the political intrigue and the sheer amount of detail (and, really, liked pretty much the whole thing while I was reading it), that Clavell spent a large portion of his 1000 or so pages carefully building up toward an enormous conflict only to have it sort of fade into the background towards the end, compared to the central love story, left me just a tad disappointed.

I'm just about to finish I Am Number 4, and it's really good IMO.

My sister's been reading that lately, and has been trying to get me into it too.

But I've just started Robert Jordan's enormous The Wheel of Time series and, if I like this first book (The Eye of the World), those will probably be consuming most of my reading time for the next several months.

Plugging my way through the 5th Game of Thrones book (well, Song of Fire & Ice book, but y'know. More people recognise Game of Thrones), A Dance With Dragons. The wait for Book 6 is gonna be loooooooong.

_{Edit: Nice GoT quote, RevolverLink :3}

But plenty else to read. A couple of Nick Harkaway novels (read The Gone Away World a couple months back, great fun), Millennium #3 (The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest), the 2nd and 3rd Hunger Games books, and a few other assorted miscellaneous on my Kindle.

I have to recommend Battle Royale whilst I'm here, which I read it last year. It's a fantastic read, following the struggle for survival of a class of 45 (iirc) Japanese schoolkids locked on a deserted island and forced to play a twisted game enforced by the government: only one of them is allowed to come off the island alive. Might recognize the plot from The Hunger Games. Battle Royale was (almost certainly) what inspired Hunger Games, but is much more adult, much more brutal, intensely violent, and has a sense of humour as dark and thick as tar. It's psychotic, adrenaline-fueled stuff, letting us get to know (and sometimes like) characters, before having them brutally dispatched. It's certainly not one for the kids. For older readers though, if you want something a bit crazy, look no further.

Yes! I adored these books when I was younger.

It gets a bad rap and the comparisons with LotR are certainly well-founded. But as a teen fiction, it's an enjoyable series. I only read the first 3 myself (some years ago now) and enjoyed them. Perhaps I'll pick up the fourth sometime, for the sake of completion.

The Shakespeare Stealer Series - Gary Blackwood

There's 3 books in the series. Its about the reniassance era, the black plaque, & Theatre.

Happy Gaming! (^_^)

I didn't start reading the series until this past fall, but now that I've finished book 5 and caught up with every other fan, the inability to dive into The Winds of Winter immediately is driving me crazy. GRRM just loves to leave each entry off with so many tantalizing cliff-hangers, and A Dance With Dragons was no different.

And thanks, it's one of my (many) favorite little moments/passages in the entire series.

A powerful quote I have just read from the WWII book, Night.

"Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for machine guns." - Elie Wiesel

I like Night, but that's not really a powerful quote...that's just sad...